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Architects: KNG Architects
- Area: 4660 ft²
- Year: 2018
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Photographs:Eresh Weerasuriya
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Manufacturers: Rocell
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Lead Architect: Nalaka Kumbukage
Text description provided by the architects. The location of Ella brings one a feeling of enjoying the cool breeze, scenic views of the mountain range, cloud forests, roughness of Ella rock, and softness of Rawana Ella waterfall. The challenge given was to build a small hotel bringing back the sense of being submerged in nature. The site, a 12-perch land enclave within the haphazard neighborhood, hardly bears a single factor to experience the natural settings of Ella other than the cooler breeze, in which the BBQ Hub was born.
BBQ Hub is a Small Luxury Boutique Hotel consisting of 8 Bedrooms and a Family room serving an intimate atmosphere and styled accommodations. The design embodies a careful combination of modernity and authenticity. While Intimate in scale, the building was designed to provide guests with a homely environment during their travels to the city of Ella. Planning was done to blend with the macro context recreating the sense of nature, thus a careful selection of earthly colors and rough textures play a vital role in generating a civilized wilderness in the design.
The center courtyard, the core space, admits natural light and ventilation to its backdrop and creates uneven shadows generating a play of brown, black, and grey tones. Restaurant, Bar, and Lobby spaces wrap around the center court to serve communal living spaces where guests can interact. The high volume makes the internal arrangement more spacious, while visually and physically directing the circulation, both horizontally and vertically. Exposed brick walls, Hammered finish paving, wash pebbles, and exposed concrete walls with sleek metal columns and wood in diversifying brown, black, and grey tones were used to recreate the innate character of the location, while 'Ahala' (Cassia fistula) and 'Kumbuk' (Terminalia arjuna) trees in dry courts enhance the natural quality with its colors of green leaves and brown tones in bunches of sleek tree trunks.
BBQ Hub, as the name highlights, provides the guest a unique experience of enjoying a live BBQ dish on their individual dining tables. Restaurant furniture was specially designed, with a careful combination of metal, wood, and fabric in brown and black tones to highlight the red hot flames of the BBQ process. While selected materials and textures filter hardness to public activities on the Ground, Bedroom interiors on the First and Second floors with cement rendered floors and white painted exposed brick walls with the natural colors of trees in private courts, adds softness for private leisure activities while serving the guests a comfortable stay.
